Pilots Women

Come Saturday, they will check their navigational equipment one last time, review flight plans, collect good-luck kisses from their husbands and boyfriends, and give their light planes full throttle as they head north into hoped-for blue skies. They are the women pilots who will be competing in a daylong air race from Van Nuys Airport to Mesquite, Nev., about 90 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

A 12-year-old American became the youngest female pilot to fly the Atlantic when she landed her single-engine plane at Glasgow airport Tuesday. "It was a hard flight," Vicki Van Meter said when her blue-and-white Cessna 210 touched down after a five-hour final leg from Reykjavik in Iceland. Her 2,000-mile flight started Sunday in Augusta, Me., the U.S. airport where Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, started her flight.

Twelve-year-old Vicki Van Meter soared up, up and away Sunday in a bid to cross the Atlantic in Amelia Earhart's path. Van Meter took off from Augusta State Airport, circled about 200 well-wishers below and dipped her wings before heading toward her first stop in Newfoundland. Her flight instructor is on board because she is too young to fly alone. "If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything," the sixth-grader from Meadville, Pa.

Air Force Lt. Jeannie Flynn had never been one to buck the system. Even though she had graduated first in her pilot training class early last year, she knew the Air Force would turn down her request to fly its top fighter plane. Women were, after all, prohibited from serving in combat. When the expected denial came, Flynn quietly switched to Plan B and enrolled in a flight instructor course in California, hoping that some day the clouds would lift over her primary target.

Whenever Julie Gereben flew with her parents in an airliner, she would always go up to the cockpit to watch the pilots. And when the pilot of a small airplane asked her if she wanted to take the controls for a few minutes during a sightseeing flight over Mt. St. Helens, she didn't hesitate. Susan Karkman realized she wanted to be a pilot while flying in a Piper Cherokee from Poland back to her home in Sweden so she could attend her sister's wedding.

Wearing a jumpsuit and a mouthful of braces, 11-year-old Victoria Van Meter made aviation history Thursday by becoming the youngest female pilot to fly from one edge of the continental United States to the other. Her nearly 3,000-mile journey began Monday in Augusta, Me., and ended amid shouts of "Amelia!"--as in Amelia Earhart--as Victoria, assisted by her flight instructor, banked over a steep mountain and smoothly landed her single-engine Cessna 172 at a small airstrip.

Betty Jane Williams and Annette (Nini) Cutter might be considered pioneers of the feminist movement, standard bearers of the small band of women who pushed into the young world of aviation from the 1920s to the 1940s. To others perhaps, but not to themselves. Williams of Woodland Hills flew military missions in the United States during World War II to free male pilots for oversea duties. Cutter of Sherman Oaks guided airline pilots as one of the nation's first female air traffic controllers.

As Rancho Palos Verdes City Councilman Steve Kuykendall helps guide the municipal ship of state, his daughter, Kerry, is studying to become a combat fighter pilot based aboard an aircraft carrier. Kerry, a 20-year-old midshipman first class, is a student at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. Since childhood she has longed to fly jet fighters and--eventually--become an astronaut.

At Navy flight school, Susan Decker mastered sophisticated airplane control panels, flew loops and barrel rolls and practiced emergency aircraft landings--just as the male students did. "We were all in classes together, we were all flying together," said Decker, 28, a former schoolteacher who is now a Navy lieutenant. "However, we all knew we were aiming for different things toward the end."

Two weeks ago, the seven women aviators of squadron VAQ-34 were sure their days flying military jets were numbered. Their job was to use their F/A-18 Hornets to play the "bad guy" in training exercises, jamming ship and aircraft radar and serving up electron beams that simulate incoming missiles. But their squadron will be decommissioned Oct. 1, courtesy of defense cuts. So will two other squadrons with the same mission in Florida and Washington state.